anatomy.tv worksheets

Do you use anatomy.tv by Primal Pictures? If you don't know, anatomy.tv is a huge, commercial online resource of annotated computer models of human anatomy. The models are all derived from real anatomy, as far as I know. It is an expensive resource, but very useful.

Rhiannon and I have been putting together some worksheets for this term so that we can direct students to particular structures and models, as you can get easily lost with so many models and structures.

If you're a Swansea medicine student, or you or your institution has a subscription to anatomy.tv, you can access the worksheets from here.

New podcast: episode 17: Bye bye Rhi

I've fixed the podcast problem, and we now have our own School of Medicine server for all our elearning needs! Podcasts should now be available from the website and from iTunes, so let me know if you have any difficulties.

A new podcast is now available, and Rhi and I recorded it last week shortly before she left. It outlines our plans for the near future.

Podcasts

The server space I use to host my podcasts is being flaky again, so you've probably been having difficulties playing them directly from this website or with downloading using iTunes. The server is a free service that is much abused by the large numbers of you that download gigabytes of audio and video data every month, so we can't complain too much.

I'm trying to move the neuroembryology podcast to Blackboard for Swansea students to access during this revision period, but Blackboard doesn't seem to like this idea. We do have a new server specifically for the School of Medicine, very kindly set up for us by the Library and Information Services department here at the university, which will be the home of all of this sort of content in the future. I'm struggling to get access to it at the moment, though.

I am working to fix the situation, so keep an eye on whichever method you prefer to get the podcasts by. The latest installment, a short, 10 minute chat with Rhiannon before she left us is waiting to be heard by you all.

Embryology podcast 16

Rhi finally badgered me into recording a neuroembryology podcast, now available from the medicine page of this website and from iTunes. It will either be the last or the penultimate podcast episode that we record before Rhi geographically leaves us next week!

Video podcast

Rhi and I are adding video podcasts to the embryology stream on iTunes. They're teaching core bits of anatomy, instead of embryology, and we start off going over some of the anatomical triangles of the neck in paint.

They're in .m4v format at the moment (MPEG4). I haven't decided how to put them on this website yet, but I will do.

Beach Olympics 2008

Team Webster won the inaugural 2008 Beach Olympics! My strong team of 5 medical students scored win after win to take the overall title and the trophy. Unfortunately the trophy fell apart, but when I bolt it back together I'll put it on a shelf in my office ready for next year.

There are a few more camera phone photos on Flickr.

Podcast

There's a new podcast up on the Medicine page and in the iTunes feed. Rhiannon and I talk about the pharyngeal arches and their roles in development for 28 minutes and 48 seconds. Ish.

Exam papers

It's the end of April, and the students have sat the exam papers for the modules that I am involved with. We're working through the statistics and the scores, learning what worked and what didn't, and the marks from all the papers will be pulled together and presented to the students sometime in the near future.

Already I've started work on next year's exam papers. In fact, I'd started before the students had even sat this year's exams. The time and organisation required to write, develop and edit new questions with the people that give the lectures, and then to form them into exam papers of the right standard, and then edit, edit, edit and edit some more is taking longer and longer each year. I'm trying to avoid any Forth Bridge references because it feels worse than that. There's something very permanent about an exam paper. It's not something you can just paint over again when the last coat starts to crack.

Embryology podcast episodes 11 & 12.

Go to the medicine page to get the latest 2 (yes, 2!) podcasts. They are no. 11: the development of the heart, and no. 12: changes to the foetal circulation at birth, with Dr Geraint Morris.

The MP3s are up, the enhanced AACs will appear on iTunes later today.

Podcast 10

Podcast 10 is up on iTunes and on the "Medicine" page. Rhi and I finally got round to talking about the embryology of the cardiovascular system!

This is the first of three cardiovascular development podcasts, and covers the development of blood vessels. Mostly. The second will discuss the development of the heart, and the third will talk about the changes to the cardiovascular system at birth. OK?

Podcast episode 9

A new embryology podcast is up on iTunes (with diagrams) and on the medicine page. We natter about the development of the male and female reproductive systems for about half an hour.

Embryology podcast no. 8

The 8th embryology podcast from me and Rhiannon, in which we talk about the development of the urinary system, is up in iTunes (enhanced AAC) and on the Medicine page (MP3).

I know, we said we were going to talk about cardiovascular embryology, but Geraint Morris was very keen to take part in some of that. We think that he's worth waiting for, so we did the urinary system first. Rhi has drawn up lots of images if you're listening to/looking at the enhanced podcast from iTunes.

I'm thinking we might have to change the name of the podcast stream, as we're going to run out of embryology topics soon. We've had so many positive comments (thank you all very much) that we're keen to continue this somehow, and probably with some anatomical topics, I guess.

Respiratory embryology podcast

A new podcast, "the embryology of the respiratory system" has gone up on iTunes (enhanced AAC) and on the Medicine page (MP3). Dr Geraint Morris, a consultant neonatologist from Singleton Hospital adds much interest to our usual whittering on.

Rhi and I did intend to follow it up with a cardiovascular podcast, but instead have recorded a renal system development one. Geraint was keen to take part in the cardiovascular development podcasts (likely to be split into two separate discussions now), so we thought we'd bash out another while waiting. It should be up in the next couple of days.

A history of kidney study

Fascinating to me, but maybe less so to medical students, is "The Kidney Through the Ages".

Members of the Italian Society of Neonatology have summarised the major discoveries over the last 2400 years leading to our modern day understanding of kidney structure and function. It's a great list of tales of precocious genius, logical reasoning and occasional plagiarism.

The Kidney Through the Ages.

Podcasts

Sheesh. You really shouldn't listen to your own podcasts several weeks after you recorded them. It's way worse than reading typos in your submitted manuscripts.

Teaching next Monday

I feel a little (only a little) contrary in saying this, but I'm looking forward to teaching on Monday.

Teaching on Monday mornings can be tough, in that you may not have had enough time in the previous week to prepare exactly as you would like, so Sunday afternoons and/or evenings get eaten up by textbooks. Getting your head ready to teach a part of the body that you don't normally spend much time looking at in any detail as your very first task of the week can be very hard, especially as I can't take my usual soluble Monday a.m. stimulants (coffee) into the anatomy labs. And we teach for about 3 hours. Add to that the very busy first term of the first year and the huge amount of anatomy that we teach in 14 consecutive weeks that is then followed by the first exam before Christmas, and the current break we get from anatomy teaching in term two becomes very welcome.

Teaching is fun though, and it is always nice to have time to spend preparing, learning, and teaching. It's a very good exercise for me, and it gives me opportunity to spend time with my textbooks to better understand human anatomy (I warned that I was feeling contrary). My first degree was Anatomical Sciences, and I chose it because I was very interested in the subject. That has never changed, although my interests have become more specialised.

The students are very bright, enjoyable to work with and can be challenging some mornings (which is a good thing, I promise). Those qualities raise my own expectations, as although it will be many years yet before I really have a thorough recall of the major proportion of anatomical knowledge, as a teacher one always tries to appear as though one really does deserve to be standing at the front of the room.

So on to the kidney for next Monday. The kidney? Oh damn, I hate teaching the kidney.

Medical abbreviations 'pose risk'

The Medical Defense Union (MDU?) and the BBC commented at the weekend on the problems caused by using abbreviations in patients' notes. Abbreviating drug names and drug doses seems to be particularly bad news, but I say that this goes for anatomy too. When teaching you'll usually find clinicians using far more abbreviations than anatomists. Watch out!

BBC article

Rhiannon and Sam's Embryology, episode 3.

Not only did I fix the podcasts, but we finished and uploaded the latest episode to iTunes and to the Medicine page. In this episode we look at the early development of the embryo, starting just after fertilisation and following it through implantation into the uterine wall, the beginnings of the placenta, to the formation of recognisable cavities and gastrulation.

Podcasts and elearning

I think I've fixed all the problems with the podcasts and the elearning modules. It might take several hours for the fixes to trickle through to iTunes, so if you can't get them today try again tomorrow.

New podcasts

New students, renewed colleagues, revised podcasts. Rhiannon and I are working to redo the embryology podcasts and to finish the series. She's far livelier than me, and the two of us may be more interesting to listen to. She's also superb at getting me to get these things done, and she has more time than me. Seriously, you wouldn't believe how many unread emails sit in my inbox.

Listen to the advert for the new podcast series. I'll start adding the new podcasts to iTunes and to the medicine page soon.

Podcasting

See? We're doing it, really, we're doing it. OK, we're a little slow, but we'll get there. It would help if I could follow simple instructions to the end though.

Movements of the Hand

I've finished preparing a new elearning project, with much of the work done by some very talented students from the School of Digital Media at the Swansea Institute of Higher Education. The project deals with the movements of the hand and looks at some of the nerves and muscles involved. It doesn't review the fine detailed anatomy of the hand, but instead is aimed at teaching the major movements and muscles of the thenar eminence. Some students (and teachers) get confused about the movements of the thumb.

You can go direct to it with this link, or from the Medicine page.

Blooper reel

I've been finishing up an anatomy elearning project that I will be making available over the next couple of weeks. To give you a taste, here are a couple of bloopers from some of the filming... (Click for video.)

Morgan!

Jo and Morgan popped in today to say hi. Morgan is 12 weeks old now. I wonder if he's started to think about his letter to Father Christmas yet.

Podcasts

I'm not podfading, honest. Rhiannon Fish has agreed to co-host the remaining embryology podcasts, and we're waiting for a second microphone to arrive. As soon as that happens I reckon we'll rattle them out.

Swansea gets a full 4-year Medicine Programme

It was very recently announced that the teaching of medicine to Swansea students will be performed entirely within the School of Medicine and the NHS Trust in Swansea. Currently students study for 2 years in Swansea and then another 2 years in clinical placements around Wales as part of the Cardiff University All-Wales Scheme.

The new course will begin in 2009, and from what I've seen will be a fairly radical integrative syllabus. All of the teaching will be moved around, avoiding separate "preclinical" and "clinical" halves to the course.

More work for us then! The Head of School did say that "This is a tribute to the outstanding clinical and medical science teaching we have delivered across School, and to all those clinical and non-clinical teaching, technical and administrative staff involved." He's right, this does make it feel like we've been doing a good job, and that we've been entrusted to do an even better job of training new doctors.

Wish us luck!

UC Berkeley first to post full lectures to YouTube

UC Berkeley are using YouTube to share lectures in a video format.

CNet reports "The school announced on Wednesday that it has begun posting entire course lectures on the Web's No.1 video-sharing site.

"Berkeley officials claimed in a statement that the university is the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. The school said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available at youtube.com/ucberkeley."

That's funny, I was just thinking about this the other week and discussed the possibility of doing the same thing with a colleague. Not to the scale of 300 hours though...

CNet article

Clinical Skills Video Podcast

In addition to downloading specially crafted clinical skills training videos from Blackboard (if you're a Swansea University medicine student) you can now access them through iTunes in a format ready for your portable video player. More videos will be released through the teaching year.

Subscribe to the video podcast using iTunes.

Clinical skills videos

The embryology podcasts have been well received, and we're working to add to those, to improve them, and to glitz them up a bit. How would you like to see clinical skills demonstration videos in a podcast format on your iPod (or other popular mp4 player)? The videos are already available on Blackboard to Swansea medical students thanks to some awesome work by the Integrated Clinical Method teaching team, but we could make them more widely accessible, both portability-wise and geographically.

New students

This week a new batch of 72ish students start the Swansea Graduate Entry Medicine programme. It's a nice easy induction week, followed by 3 weeks of introductory teaching and then 12 weeks of hard, hard work (for both students and staff). Good luck to you all, and I hope you'll enjoy the course and the Swansea/Gower area.

Exam day

This morning we set up the final anatomy exam for the current 1st years. If they pass this, that will be the end of their anatomy teaching for their "undergraduate" medicine training.

So you want to be a university lecturer?

I came across an interesting article while trying to find out what it is that people think we (university lecturers) do. This doesn't tell me that, but much of it sounds very familiar. It's more about what we actually do, than what people think of us. Small parts of it are quite different to my experiences of teaching highly motivated, interesting graduate students.

"I have become convinced that the continued existence of universities is predicated on this simple fact: lecturers would rather work themselves into the an early grave, rather than fail to meet their perceived obligations to their students or to scholarship. The entire system hinges on this being true; if it weren't, then university education would cease."

Full article link.

Endocrine Embryology Podcast

I recorded a podcast for the endocrine embryology lecture recently, but I've not yet had time to draw images for the enhanced version. It should be available via iTunes and the medicine page soon.

This podcast is a little out of sync with the other lectures in the embryology series. As there is an exam approaching I thought I would make this podcast available now, but I am slowly working on the others. I guess they'll dribble out slowly over the next several months.

Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service

Anti-plagiarism software use is becoming commonplace to ensure that students do not submit other people's work as part of their own. The method of storing submitted essays and comparing with essays submitted in the future poses a potential legal problem.

The Washington Post reports that "Two McLean High School students have launched a court challenge against a California company hired by their school to catch cheaters, claiming the anti-plagiarism service violates copyright laws."

"The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, seeks $900,000 in damages from the for-profit service known as Turnitin. The service seeks to root out cheaters by comparing student term papers and essays against a database of more than 22 million student papers as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. In the process, the student papers are added to the database.

"Turnitin is used by 6,000 institutions in 90 countries, including Harvard and Georgetown universities, company officials have said."

"According to the lawsuit, each of the students obtained a copyright registration for papers they submitted to Turnitin."

Full article link.

Originally seen on Slashdot.

Spotter 1 exam marks

The results from the first anatomy spotter exam are up on the notice board (and on Blackboard, I think). All the first year students were looking rather tired and not particularly over the moon about being back in studies on Monday, at the term's first anatomy session. I hope that when they see the results their spirits lift, as their results were rather excellent. Well done all.

Exam Day

It's exam day today. I would wish all of our first year students good luck, but really I don't want luck to be a factor. I'd much rather that you had all done the work required to understand and store the information you'll need to demonstrate a good to high level of competency. If you see what I mean. Good luck anyway.

Hopefully the exam will not be as tough as many of you were expecting. This exam will be double marked by hand, and the results will not be available until mid-January so relax over Christmas and have a break. After speaking to most of you at yesterday afternoon's revision session many of you seemed to have a high level of understanding of many areas of the anatomy that we have studied.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Term 1 spotter questions

I've added the example musculoskeletal anatomy questions to the term 1 section on the medicine page. Remember that the real exam will not use multiple choice questions.

Enhanced Podcasts

I've uploaded a podcast based upon the last embryology lecture about the development of the musculoskeletal system. Unfortunately I haven't been able to add images to these podcasts in the enhanced format as I have wanted to: I just haven't had enough time. I need to draw the images myself and this just takes too long. It may be something I'll have to add in later years.

Halloween

With Phil it's not just the time of year that causes this change of colour.

Skeletons everywhere

I haven't got this skeleton in my office because it's Halloween, honest. It's because we're starting to teach musculoskeletal anatomy next week.

Bones photos

I've been taking photos of bones this morning for elearning materials, exams and so on. Greg popped in and this strange photo occurred by happenstance. (He was looking at the skull).

Embryology podcasts

I've added the podcast for the "First 18 days of the embryo" lecture to iTunes and the medicine page. I missed it out by accident thinking I had already created it. Thanks to Eve Bridgeman for the recording.

I want to include images as part of the enhanced podcasts, but I need to draw these myself and have unfortunately had nowhere near enough time to do this. I'll revisit these recordings in the future and add them at some point, and I'll make note of that here.

Embryology lectures

It's difficult (embryology, that is). Both teaching and learning the subject is difficult. As a subject that I am used to, albeit in a rather superficial manner in most areas, it's not easy to know whether I'm getting the key points across or if I'm muddling the ideas. The group of students in the Swansea Graduate Entry Programme are from such a diverse range of backgrounds that it is impossible to treat them all alike (particularly in their first year), so to what level do you cater? Medical students don't really need a huge amount of detailed developmental biology knowledge but the basic processes and concepts are very important, and will help them. Are the lectures too simple, or not simple enough? I suspect that the answer will be different for each student. Am I overly repetitive, or is reviewing ideas helpful? Is the subject matter itself interesting enough, or must it be clinically oriented to hold their attention?

In the last couple of years students have done well in this part of their exams. As to whether I have aided or slowed their understanding, I'm uncertain. I hope the exam results tell the true tale.

Sunny Mornings

I really didn't want to come in to work today. We'd had an excellent extended weekend and I was woken by Jack at about 7.15 this morning. I was nice and comfortable at home and Jack was really sad about the idea of me going to work for the day (I'll aim not to work too late this afternoon). By the time I had packed everything I needed for the day I really couldn't muster the energy to get on my bike. It was chilly too, with the suggestion in the air that September starts this week.

Nonetheless, I got on my bike and onto the cyclepath (after an unusual struggle to turn right on the road with car drivers uncertain of their ability to drive properly). The sun was out, the woods were bright and green, and I soon warmed up pedaling easily uphill. As usual, by the time I reached the sea I was feeling much better - awake and brighter. The tide was almost in, and the sea was flat calm. The sky was still blue, so it was very pleasant. I found myself looking forward to getting to my desk and preparing the next few weeks of teaching with a cup of tea.

So far all is going well. I think I must be lucky to enjoy my job, right?

Footy Photos

I was asked to take some photos of a friendly work kickabout. Some of those photos are up on the Photos page.

Spotter 3

Today is the final anatomy exam of the year, and the last piece of the human structure module for most of our medicine students. Many of them were looking far more nervous than I've seen before. We're examining the anatomy of the head and neck, which can get very detailed and intricate but is a shorter term (and in theory less information) than the other two. On the one hand they may be worried about the minutiae, but on the other they should now know the style and level of difficulty of this type of exam.

Time will tell. I should get them marked within the next couple of days, but then they need to be second marked and all the marks discussed and compiled.

HRH Visit

Pretty much my only view of the Royal visit today: Swansea University webcam from home.

Pre-Royal Visit

The University is full of police searching the grounds today, before tomorrow's Royal Visit. We had a fire alarm this morning so the Fire Brigade turned up too. Almost a full suite of emergency services.

Anatomy Finished

Today was the last anatomy session for the current first years (I think they were quite happy with that). That's it, the teaching is over for another year. I've still got some web-based revision exercises to add to for them before they sit the exam, but they have been taught all the anatomy that they need to know to practice medicine. Quite a milestone.

All they have to do now is prove to me that they've learnt it all by passing their last anatomy exam in 2 weeks time. Good luck!

Dr Bishop et al

Jo and family popped in to the office today. Baby Bradley is doing very well. Great to see them!

Staff v Student Football

Unfortunately I missed the School of Medicine staff vs student football tournament this week. It was billed as the start of a range of tournaments between staff and student groups, so I hope to attend the future games. I wasn't actually planning to play, but I was looking forward to taking lots of action photos. It looks as though there was an excellent turn out, so I'm guessing this will continue strongly particularly as there is a champions' cup for the students to gibe us about.

Oh well, maybe next time. I'm not used to shooting football matches (more usually cyclists, swimmers & runners) so it should be a challenge.

End of term

The 1st year medicine students are approaching the end of term, and the end of their first year. It's a long, tough year, but they have one more teaching week next week, a reading week, and then a week of exams. They have some more work to do after that, but we won't be directly teaching them in lectures. Resit exams will be held in August, and then the new batch start at the beginning of September, so in fact there's little respite for us teachers. We're already preparing for next year.

As a side note, Jo Bishop tells me that her planned return date is 22nd January. The first term of anatomy and all of the exams will be mine to prepare then. I hope I can survive that long!

Royal Visit

The Prince of Wales will be visiting Swansea University at the beginning of next month. He's not interested in the School of Medicine though, more the Institute of Environmental Sustainability.

Full story

Medsoc Summer Ball

Here's a photo of Clive delivering an on-form after dinner speech at last night's Medsoc summer ball. An entertaining evening beside the sea (in true Swansea style) at the Oxwich hotel. Thanks for inviting us lecturers!

iPod more popular than beer?

apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/06/08/1954233.shtml

And while I'm linking to /. articles, here's another one about the prevalence and importance of the iPod at Universities. The information is based upon US uni's, but from my own experience I'd apply it to UK institutions too, and suggest that this is a very good reason for providing students with podcast based learning materials. This is something I'll probably be doing for the embryology teaching next year.

GMC

Our regulating body (the General Medical Council) visited today. They're studying our course this year to make sure we're up to scratch and to recommend improvements. Needless to say, we've been building up to today for some time, but in the end didn't really put much on for show, as Thursdays are good clinical teaching days anyway. Reports from those involved have been very positive so far but we need to wait until later in the year for the full, official report. It'll be published online so I'll post a link.

I think we've done a lot in the last three years, and I'd hope that the students of the last two years have taken a lot from it. I've been hearing good reports from clinicians that they've been getting involved with on clinical rotations. I hope we've given them a good base for their last two years of training and for their careers. A good report from the GMC would be very welcome, and very rewarding. It's always nice to be told that you're doing a good job once in a while.